The industry is evolving and so are the facilities
If the COVID pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that the notion of the traditional data center is significantly evolving. For years, companies routinely stored data either on-premises or in an off-site data center. Little, if any, thought was given to the notion of a distributed workforce or the need for a distributed data center infrastructure. And the term "edge computing" was not in anyone’s vocabulary.
Companies in the sector routinely described themselves as data center providers. Or, if they wanted to be as advanced firms, they called themselves colocation providers. But the emergence of a virus that forced reevaluation of the way people work — and from where they work — has changed the very notion of how companies do business. It has also changed the perception and the need for how data centers are utilized. Customers are requiring more from these third-party providers, and they are moving more rapidly than ever, of necessity, to keep pace.